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How To Tell If You’re Being Yourself With a Guy

I’ve been thinking lately about how dating someone can make you act in-authentically. Because I pride myself on knowing—ahem—myself, I was unnerved recently when I realized how little I was Erin when I dated Scott. And that’s why I’m so thrilled that I feel like Erin again, dating Justin.

Remember how I said that Scott called me “Sunshine” and “Gorgeous”? I really liked that but you know, he also never called me “Erin”—and I would have liked that more. I asked him to (instead of “Hey, you,” another one of his favorites), but he thought that wasn’t very fun. Hello, who doesn’t like to hear his or her own name? I think if anything, when you’re just getting to know someone, you’ve gotta start with the facts, like what’s on your birth certificate.

When someone puts you on a pedestal or in a box or labels you (e.g. SoCal ditz, “Blogger Girl,” “Classy Girl!”), you might subconsciously play up that part of you—even if it’s unflattering—merely because you know it will get a reaction. It’s scary-easy to slip into character!

Example: Sometimes I say dumb things that I can’t help. And sometimes I just think them. If a guy laughs at my “blonde moments,” as Scott called them, I might start saying the dumb things I was only thinking. And it’s not like I was censoring myself before, but who says everything they think (other than my grandma)?

Not to compare guys, but Justin is intelligent, mature, real, and not cheesy. He doesn’t try to name a thing before he has studied it. There’s no endless name-calling or fetishizing or categorizing or comparing. Scott also used to say, “You’re prettier than me,” which sounds like a compliment but automatically puts you above a guy, or puts you on the clean-up crew for his self-esteem, or for some odd reason, makes you a Mean Girl.

Be Yourself: Everyone Else is Already Taken, a book by Mike Robbins (in stores this month) confirms my little observations. We don’t act ourselves when inundated with the message that looks matter more than substance, or when comparing ourselves to others.

Have you ever been in a situation like this? What labels do you get (e.g. sorority girl, pageant queen)? What nicknames have made you not act yourself?